The Zen of Repetition on Off the Wall Friday

It's been hot.  I mean really HOT....well at least for the Lake Erie region it's been hot.  With that I've spent a lot of time hold up in my air conditioned bedroom doing hand work on my pinwheel's quilt.  There is something relaxing about the white noise of the conditioner  and just stitching piece after piece.  It's meditative and soothing.  Many summers I've spent the dog days of August finishing up hand quilting for our county fair.  I love the repeating of the small little stitches adding so much texture where once there was none.  Sighhhhh.....No fair this year....no quilting this year.....but still the dog days are heading our way.  So I guess my English paper piecing project is just going to suffice.

I'm not the only one that finds repetition soothing though.  I was reading about  collagist, painter Sarah Gee Miller this week. She's such an inspiration. Reading her story, you can see how she's a lady who realizes that you need to work hard for your art, but she has also learned how to find peace in it too.  Concerning her series Eye of the Storm, she writes, "a series of hypnotic repetitions either in circular or hexagon form. There is a striving for balance between optical thrill through saturated colour and calming an agitated mindset through rhythmic and repeated bands." Her video Make A Drawing on a Machine is crazy!!  (its a record player...with Led Zeppelin on it ...she thinks.)
She says of her work...

"My work is very meditative.  It's a familiar dance, and I know all the moves.

 I'll spend eight hours painting stripes and making sure every single line is perfect

 or laying down thousand of individual dots  - and the thousandth one 

has to be as perfect as the first.  I don't really know how or why I can do it.

 I'm not really a patient person.  I guess it's pure stubbornness"

Although I'm not such a perfectionist, I can totally relate to the idea of doing something over and over for the greater good of a larger piece.  Although one stitch, one quarter inch seam, one square might not be much....added over and over and over...it adds up to a LOT of beauty and interest and texture and well you get what I mean.  

I hope you take some time to look over Miller's work and find some inspiration in it!

Things I Like!

So I put the final decorative touches on my studio.  At the beginning of the project, I said I was NOT going to get all girly do cutesy decoration.  Well apparently, I was kidding to myself and ended up doing a few cutesy projects!!

Paper Machete Letters filled with rice and mod podge covered with decorative scrap paper (cost about $7 & 3 hrs)

Chip Board letters spelling out a reminder that I'm am there to get things done (cost $10 and 30 min)

Contact paper to cover the grey bins that I decided where to industrial (cost $14 and 4 hrs) 

Andddddddd my daughter pulled out her camera and came up with some shots that are suppose to remind me of why I love summer!!!

So What Have You've Been up to Creatively?

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